


Joints

by slashy (slashmyheartandhopetoporn)



Series: Objects Verse [3]
Category: Justified
Genre: Hand Jobs, M/M, Marijuana
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-21
Updated: 2015-04-21
Packaged: 2018-03-25 02:21:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3793018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slashmyheartandhopetoporn/pseuds/slashy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>5 times Raylan caught Tim smoking pot.</p><p>1 time Tim caught Raylan.</p><p>In honor of 4/20, though it's being posted late because I'm the worst.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Joints

1.

 

It wasn’t a date, and they both knew it. It was just drinks after work at a bar near Tim’s apartment (that’s definitely not the vet bar, because you couldn’t pay Raylan to visit that place again). Sure, Raylan had been flirting to varying degrees with Tim for the past couple weeks, and yeah, Tim had been more receptive than Raylan might have expected--which is to say he hadn’t shot Raylan in the head yet for hitting on him--but that didn’t mean drinks were a date. They were just drinks.

They both had a glass of Wild Turkey in hand, attentions mostly focused on enjoying their whiskey rather than talking. _If this were a date, we’d be talking_ , Raylan told himself. Instead, they were just drinking, if their tabs were anything to go by. That said, the silence wasn’t wholly uncomfortable.

Raylan swallowed the last bit of his bourbon and readied to ask if Tim wanted another round when he noticed Tim was eyeing a fellow on the other side of the bar.

Raylan frowned in the man’s direction. “You know him?”

Tim shrugged. “In a sense.”

Raylan raised an eyebrow. “You two…?” He wasn’t sure how comfortable Tim was with the matter of his sexuality, at least when they were discussing it in public.

Tim scoffed and put a hand against his chest in mock offense. “Raylan, I do not fuck drug dealers.”

Raylan’s mouth opened in surprise.

“And it doesn’t count if I fucked him before I knew he was a dealer,” Tim added before Raylan could think of anything to say.

Raylan’s brain tried to process both Tim’s blatant reference to his own sex life and his seeming confession to partaking in illegal substances. Of the two options, Raylan latched on to the most unexpected. “Wait--dealer? What kind of dealer?”

Tim frowned. “Didn’t Art tell you about my raging addiction to hillbilly heroin?” When Raylan leveled his most disapproving expression, Tim’s facade broke. “Jesus, Raylan, just pot. Not that it’s any of your business, really.”

“You smoke pot?”

“I do believe that’s what I just said.”

Raylan turned to give the man across the bar another once-over. “And he’s your dealer?”

Tim answered with a long-suffering sigh. “I think I’ll say hello,” he said as he slid out of the booth. “Promise you won’t arrest me if I come back with a little weed?”

Raylan shrugged. “Probably my turn to put you in handcuffs.”

It took Tim a minute to remember what the hell Raylan was referring to. “Shit, Raylan, if I’d known that’s what you’d been thinking about these last few years I’d have let you cuff me ages ago. As it is, the night’s still young. If you’ll refrain from cuffing me over some harmless Mary Jane, we can negotiate some much more fun terms later.” Then Tim was headed for his dealer while Raylan looked like an idiot. He drank the last of Tim’s whiskey in retaliation.

 

2.

 

Tim was hardwired to deal with stress and discomfort thanks to his time as a Ranger, but damn if it didn’t take a toll on him at the end of every day.

And today had been a bad one.

He, Raylan, and Rachel had had to deal with a maniac fugitive who’d taken a class of fifth graders hostage. Visual had been shit. The guy had been armed to the teeth. There’d been no convenient vantage point for Tim to set up his rifle. Yet everyone had looked to him--had expected him--to get them out of the shit situation. Kandahar trained Tim to work under pressure, but he was only human.

He made the shot, as he always did. Kids got out safe. He was a fucking hero. Hell yeah, right on, everyone call it a day. But every muscle in his body still thrummed with adrenaline, and he couldn’t stop grinding his teeth. Tim knew he still had to check in with Art and get the all clear to go, but all he could think about was getting the hell home, getting a good buzz going, and crossfading himself to sleep.

He could see Raylan heading his way, hat off in the heat, Kevlar abandoned once Tim had taken care of the threat, and Tim knew exactly what Raylan would want to do. They’d been dancing around each other for almost a month now, and Tim didn’t know why he had yet to either punch Raylan or fuck him, but he knew just which option he’d choose now if Raylan came within five feet of him. So Tim tossed his rifle case in the back seat of his car and got out of dodge before he did something he’d probably regret later.

About an hour later and Tim had finished some cold pizza and put on an old Leadbelly record. He was a few puffs into his joint and halfway through his second beer when there was a knock at his door. He knew exactly who it would be, though he desperately hoped he was wrong, and when the door swung open it indeed revealed Raylan leaned up against the jamb, head cocked, and a bottle of maker’s in hand. If Tim hadn’t already been a little mellowed out with beer and weed, he would have said something rude, but instead he just rolled his eyes and stepped aside to let Raylan in.

“Art and Rachel wondered where you took off to. Sent me to go find you,” Raylan said as he took a seat on Tim’s couch.

“I’m sure they did,” Tim said, though he remained standing.

Raylan eyed the joint in Tim’s hand. “You know you’re not supposed to take off like that.”

Tim snorted. “Right, and you’re the paragon of good behavior.”

Raylan smiled in that self-effacing he way he had that drove Tim fucking crazy. “Sit down with me,” he said--an order, politely worded, but an order all the same.

Tim stood still a moment, taking another toke from his joint before slowly sitting down as far away from Raylan as he could on the sofa. Raylan watched him expectantly, but Tim refused to say a word. He had no intention of humoring Raylan; his only intention was to follow through with his original plan: listen to some music and get a little fucked up.

“You do this often?” Raylan asked, gesturing around the room to encompass the music and the pot and the beer.

“Only every day,” Tim answered because he knew it’d irritate Raylan, though it wasn’t actually true.

“Never took you for a record collector,” Raylan said, his eyes roaming over the collection Tim had displayed against one of the living room walls.

“Because you know me so well,” he said back, voice a little thicker than it might normally have been.

Raylan simply sighed and stood to examine the records. He ran his hands along their length, as if marking them his, before sitting back down on the couch, noticeably closer to Tim than he had been before. Tim snorted again and let his head fall back against the couch, because Raylan wasn’t even trying to be subtle—he’d moved a good foot over.

And all at once Tim was exhausted with their pussyfooting around. So he took matters into his own hands and moved over to close the gap between them. Raylan smiled in that way he had when he wasn't not quite sure how else he was supposed to react. Just smiled as if to say, _Of course this is what I thought would happen. Of course I anticipated this exact turn of events_. He threw an arm around the back of the couch behind Tim’s head and said, “I think you’re giving me a contact high.”

“That’s a shitty come-on,” Tim said back, and Raylan nodded, ceding the truth of it.

“You got a better one?” he asked Tim.

Tim shrugged and shifted so he was facing Raylan. He took a long drag of his joint and leaned into Raylan. Raylan tilted his head and let his lips part, waited for Tim to close the gap—but not completely. Just so their lips were almost touching, but not quite. Then Tim exhaled into Raylan’s mouth.

Tim leaned back and watched Raylan inhale and exhale the smoke out through his nose. He smiled a small smile. “How’s that one work for you?”

Raylan nodded and laughed a little, which turned into a cough, which had him laughing more. “It works all right,” he said.

Then he kissed Tim for real.

 

3.

 

They were at a bar (as they often were) getting a drink with Art and Rachel when Raylan sensed something in Tim’s demeanor change. His shoulders stiffened, his eyes locked on some distant space in front of him. If they hadn’t been with Art and Rachel, Raylan would have asked what was going on, what Tim had seen or felt or remembered. As it were, he could ask none of those things, so he slipped a hand under the table and along Tim’s knee.

Tim startled slightly at the physical contact--they didn’t touch much while out in public, even though both Art and Rachel knew about their...whatever they were calling what they were doing. He shook his head, a minute action but one Raylan caught all the same, and Raylan removed his hand from Tim’s leg.

The moment Raylan’s hand left Tim’s body, Tim was standing from their shared table. “Excuse me, would you?” he said to the others, then he hightailed it out of the bar.

Rachel and Art gave Raylan a confused look. Raylan shrugged. “I don’t know shit about what goes on in Gutterson’s head. Didn’t before and I’m starting to think I know even less now.” It wasn’t true, and Art and Rachel knew it, but they were generous enough to let the lie go.

“You want to go after him?” Art asked.

“Shit, Art, this ain’t a romance movie.”

“Go after him,” Rachel demanded, and Raylan sighed.

He tossed back the last of his drink and nodded. “Fine. I will go after the grown-ass man who just politely excused himself from the table.”

It was almost uncanny the unimpressed looks both Art and Rachel were sporting as Raylan exited the bar.

It took Raylan a moment once he made it outside to locate Tim. A little bit of scouting, however, found Raylan staring at Tim as he sat in the driver’s seat of his SUV, eyes closed and a joint in hand.

“Go away,” Tim said, though his eyes were still closed.

“That’s kinda creepy,” Raylan told him.

“I can smell your cologne, dumb-ass.”

Raylan rested his arms on the open driver window. “Look, if I go back inside Art and Rachel are going to glare at me harder than you could ever imagine doing yourself, and it’ll be twofold. So I’m going to stay out here and take your verbal abuse because it’s still preferable to what’s waiting for me inside if I abandon you in your time of emotional need. Or whatever.”

“I got my time of emotional need covered, thanks,” Tim said, finally opening his eyes and looking pointedly at his joint.

“I’m sure you do,” Raylan agreed. “Still, if you wanted to tell me what happened I don’t think it’d be amiss.”

Tim let out a frustrated breath. “You’re ruining my high.”

“Well, I have been known to be a bit of a buzzkill.”

Tim glared at Raylan. “I saw someone who looked like someone else I used to know. I’m not spelling the rest of this shit out for you. And I’m not saying anything more. Now let me be.”

Raylan lifted his hands in surrender. “Fine; I’ll go. You coming back inside though?”

Tim stubbed out his joint and flicked the butt out into the parking lot.

“No, I am not.”

Raylan nodded. “I’ll get my things then.”

It was an indication of how fucked up Tim was that he didn’t argue.

 

4.

 

If Tim harbored any secrets beyond his Raylan-related ones, it’d be the degree to which he enjoyed a good bath.

Raylan hadn’t even been informed of Tim’s proclivity for a long soak, and Tim preferred to keep it that way. Raylan, however, had some sort of instinct for disrupting other people’s plans.

Tim was sitting back in his tub with a book in one hand and a joint in the other when he heard the lock on his front door turn. His alarm was not due to the fact that someone was entering his apartment--Raylan had a key, after all, and was welcome over as he pleased--but rather the timing.

“Shit,” Tim said under his breath, but of course the sound echoed against the bathroom walls.

“Tim?” he heard Raylan call out. “Where’re you hiding?”

Tim sighed. “Bathroom,” he called back out. He listened as Raylan made his way to the back corner of the apartment where Tim’s bathroom was nestled.

“You taking a shit or can I come in?” Raylan asked from somewhere down the hall.

“I’m not taking a shit, but you still can’t come in,” Tim yelled back.

“What the hell does that mean?” Raylan said as he came upon the open bathroom door. Then he laughed when he looked inside. “Oh, I get it now.”

Tim threw his book at Raylan’s head. “Get all your jokes out now, asshole.”

“I’m honestly coming up empty,” Raylan replied. “I’d really just like to know why?”

“Because they feel nice, you dick.”

“I guess I wouldn’t know,” Raylan considered. “But look at you--a book, some pot--you’re ready to go. Got any red wine stashed away somewhere? Surprised there’s not any bubbles involved, not that I’m complaining about the view.”

Tim narrowed his eyes at Raylan. “I’d get out and smack you, but my limbs feel like putty, so just know a solid hit’s coming your way later.”

Raylan was still grinning. “Well, be that as it may, I’ll help you out right now and come to you instead.” Then Raylan took the few remaining steps between the doorway and the bathtub and took a seat on the floor alongside it, facing Tim. “Give that here,” he said, hand extended for the joint.

Tim begrudgingly gave it to him. “I want the last hit, though.”

Raylan inhaled deeply and then passed the joint back. “It’s all yours.”

Tim took it back and enjoyed the final puff. “That all you’re going to say about it?”

Raylan, who was trailing his fingers through the warm water, was momentarily confused by the question. “Oh, you mean the tub situation,” he said.

Tim rolled his eyes. “Jesus, obviously I mean the tub situation.”

Raylan pushed up the sleeve of his henley before dipping his whole hand into the water. “I was actually just thinking about how the water does feel awfully nice.”

Tim let his head loll onto his shoulder so he was looking at Raylan sideways. “It’d be a tight fit, but I think there’s room enough for both of us in here if you want to experience it for yourself.”

“I don’t know about that,” Raylan said, dipping his hand in deeper. “I think we’re okay like his.” The way Tim’s eyes closed the moment Raylan’s fingers wrapped themselves around his cock seemed to indicate his agreement.

“Fuck, Raylan,” said Tim. He tossed his extinguished joint somewhere in the direction of the toilet, then let one hand fall onto his chest to tweak a nipple and other drape over the side of the tub.

“I love how handsy you get when you’re stoned,” Raylan said as he stroked Tim to full hardness.

“Uh, think you’re the one getting handsy at the moment.”

As if to prove Tim wrong, Raylan removed his hand. Tim was readying to complain when he realized Raylan was just readjusting. He sat himself on his knees so it was easier to lean over the tub, and then took Tim’s cock in his hand once more. Then he bent forward to kiss Tim’s parted lips, tongue slipping inside.

Both of Tim’s hands came to wrap behind Raylan’s neck, drawing him forward, but the angle was awkward and threw off Raylan’s balance. Before either man could stop it, Raylan was half in the tub with Tim and soaking wet.

“Shit,” Tim said, but Raylan shook his head.

“It’s fine,” he said. “More than.” Then he shucked off his boots and crawled into the tub the rest of the way.

 

5.

 

While Loretta McCready was more than capable of taking care of herself and her home, some misplaced sense of fatherhood had Raylan helping her out with odd jobs around the house whenever she’d let him. Even Tim had gotten himself involved on occasion.

So it wasn’t a complete surprise when Raylan let himself in to Tim’s apartment and found a note stuck on the fridge saying Tim had headed over to Loretta’s to help her fix a leaky sink pipe in the kitchen. Tim’s handwriting was pure shit, but Raylan managed to make out the the small postscript at the end instructing him to make his own way to Loretta’s once he could.

He was knocking on Loretta’s door twenty minutes later.

“Raylan, if that’s you, you can come on in!” Loretta called out.

Raylan opened the door and was met with the pungent odor of the cash crop Loretta has so thoroughly aligned herself with. “And if it hadn’t been me?” he asked, his nose scrunching up despite himself.

“Then Tim would have shot you,” Loretta said matter of factly.

Raylan watched as Tim took a hit from an ornately designed bong. “That so, Tim?”

Tim nodded, his mouth still on the water pipe.

“So, this is responsible adulting,” Raylan said as he took a seat on the couch next to Tim, a hand slapping perhaps a bit too sharply on Tim’s upper thigh.

Tim exhaled a cloud of smoke. “I’ll have you know we fixed her sink first.”

“It’s true,” Loretta agreed from the kitchen where she was pouring herself and Tim glasses of water.

“So then how long you been at this?”

Loretta handed Tim a glass and shrugged. “Not that long. Tim only got here about an hour ago.”

Raylan sighed. “I’d be mad, but I don’t much see the use at this point.”

“Also you know I’m a fantastic lay when I’m high,” Tim added.

“I didn’t need to hear that,” Loretta said with a frown.

“Then that’ll teach you to get high with Tim, because he doesn’t have much of a filter when he’s stoned. Which, hey, has made for some very interesting conversations, I’ll tell you that.” Raylan looked at his wayward partner, whose hand was lazily trailing along Raylan’s side. “He didn’t drink any, did he?” Raylan asked Loretta.

“You can talk to me directly, Raylan,” Tim interjected. “I’m literally right here.”

Raylan looked at Loretta.

“No, he didn’t,” she said.

“Good,” Raylan said, catching Tim’s wandering hand and holding it in his own. “Well, since neither one of us is much needed at the moment, I think I’ll get Gutterson home, if you don’t mind, Loretta.”

Loretta sighed dramatically. “Spoilsport.”

“So they say,” Raylan agreed, then he helped haul Tim off the couch and out the door. “Be smart, Loretta,” he said as they left.

“Always am, Raylan,” Loretta replied.

 

1.

 

Tim got dinner with Rachel a few times a month, just the two of them. She was by far his favorite person, which not even Raylan was able or willing to argue with, and she was the one he’d known the longest in Lexington besides Art, who’d been a good friend to Tim, but certainly not like Rachel.

Their dinner dates had been a fixture of their friendship almost from the start of his time as a Lexington marshal, and they’d come to function for Tim as a kind of grounding experience when the rest of his life felt like it was falling to shit. They rarely talked explicitly about either of their lives outside of work, at least, not beyond the mundane reports of their families and friends, but it was enough to comfortably share a meal together.

“Got any plans tonight?” Rachel asked while they were paying their bill for the evening, and it was her way of asking how things were going with Raylan.

“Staying in after this,” Tim answered. “It’s the anniversary of Raylan’s mom’s death today, not that he’s talking about it.”

“Sounds like someone I know,” Rachel said as she counted out dollar bills for the tip.

“Yeah, well. I’m sorry all the men in your life are emotionally stunted children.”

“Art’s not so bad,” replied Rachel.

“Anyway,” continued Tim, “I figure we’ll just hang around the apartment not talking about shit until it’s time to pretend to go to bed. Then we’ll fuck and Raylan will continue to act like he doesn’t give a damn about anything but himself, his daughter, and me when I’m not driving him too crazy.”

“Sounds about right,” Rachel agreed.

“Par for the course.”

What wasn’t par for the course though, was what Tim found after having said his goodbyes to Rachel and then making his way home. Sitting on the couch, she'd of all clothes but his boxers and a white tank top, pipe in hand, was Raylan.

“This is new,” Tim said, surprise coloring his tone.

Raylan exhaled and considered the pipe. “I don’t get why you smoke joints when pipes seem so much more effective?”

Tim fell onto the couch and took the pipe from Raylan’s hand, igniting what little weed was left usable in the bowl. “I don’t know,” Time said after a toke. “Joint’s are just more convenient. Roll a bunch at once, stash them around the apartment. Have them ready-made and shit.”

“Just seems like a waste is all,” Raylan replied.

They sat in silence a moment. Tim took another (slightly unpleasant) hit from the pipe before setting it aside and looking at Raylan. “You want to talk about it?”

Raylan _tsk_ ’d. “What do you think?”

Tim allowed himself the small pleasure of running a hand through Raylan’s hair. “I think,” he said eventually, “that you should fuck me as hard as you possibly can.”

Raylan laughed. “That’s not what I expected you to say.”

Tim shrugged. “It’s not what I meant to say. But I’m not a therapist, and you’re a grown man. You want to talk to me, you will. You know you can, Raylan.”

Raylan took Tim’s hand from his hair. “I do know,” he said, brushing his dry lips along the knuckles.

Tim momentarily closed his eyes at the sensation. “So, okay; If you don’t want to talk about it, then just about all I can offer you is a good fuck. And you know I’m happy to.”

“Tim, you know you mean more to me than that.”

Tim pulled his hand out from Raylan’s. “Yeah, I do. But when it comes to shit like this? Look, I can listen or I can fuck. Let me do at least one of the things I can.”

Raylan shook his head. “Tell me, Tim: Why do we have to make everything so damn hard?”

Tim wished he had more weed at hand. Or a shot of something. He found it hard to talk to Raylan sober during one of Raylan's rare moments of introspection. He never knew the right thing to say, though he wished he did.

“I don’t bother asking myself that anymore, Raylan," was all he could muster  

“Sounds healthy,” Raylan said with a small smile.

“You know me,” Tim said with an answering smile. “The pinnacle of human health.”

“Let’s go to bed,” Raylan said.

“Thought you’d never ask.”

**Author's Note:**

> MUCH THANKS to my lovely tumblr anon friend who suggested the shotgunning, bathroom, and Loretta scenes.
> 
> Also I have no idea why this took such a shitty sad note at the end there, but I am so fucking tired it's gonna have to do.


End file.
